Mozambique: President asks minister to ensure 'efficient, transparent' justice
Mozambique Elections: Renamo announces Congress in May to elect party president
3:10 CAT | 22 Mar 2024
FILE - For illustration purposes only. [File photo: VOA]
The Mozambican National Resistance (Renamo), the country’s main opposition party, today announced the holding of the Congress, between May 15th and 16th, to elect the next president of the organisation.
Saimone Macuiane, a Renamo lawyer, made the announcement at the Maputo City Judicial Court, as part of an agreement with deputy Venâncio Mondlane, who filed an injunction demanding that the party leadership set the elective congress dates.
“We reached an agreement regarding the scheduling of the congress. The Renamo congress will take place between the 15th and 16th of May,” lawyer Saimone Macuiane told the judge in the case, brought by Mondlane on February 23rd.
READ: Mozambique Elections: Maputo court to rule on date for Renamo Congress this Friday – Mondlane
Mozambique Elections: Maputo court prohibits ‘structural acts’ by Renamo leader – Lusa report
“We want a strong party, for the good of the nation and Mozambican society, these are the wishes of Renamo members,” Macuiane declared.
The Renamo lawyer said that an office would be created to prepare for the congress.
In his intervention during the hearing, Venâncio Mondlane, who again today expressed his intention to run for president of the party, asked the court to include in the minutes of the judicial agreement that all members of the party freely could carry out their activities, pointing out that there is evidence limiting “political freedom” of members who intend to run for president of the party.
“We did not want there to be an impediment to political freedom,” Mondlane emphasized, also urging “equal treatment” of all candidates for Renamo leadership.
The Renamo lawyer agreed to the demands, but stressed that the activists’ actions must be “in accordance with the statutes”.
Mondlane reiterated to Lusa that he intends to run for president of Renamo, because the party needs “reform and modernization, to become a winner”, having never won elections since 1994, the year in which universal suffrage was instituted in Mozambique.
Mondlane said that only the next party congress can decide whether the elected president will also be a candidate for the country’s October 9 presidential elections.
“This is an issue that will be determined by the congress itself,” he said, adding that “the terms and conditions of the candidate” would then be established.
A Renamo source said that it will be up to the party’s national council to confirm the dates for the next main meeting and announce the meeting location.
The Judicial Court of the City of Maputo had already banned the current president of Renamo, Ossufo Momade, from carrying out “structuring acts”, on the grounds that the leader of the organization is technically out of office, in compliance with another precautionary measure brought by Venâncio Mondlane.
Renamo has been led by Ossufo Momade since the death of Afonso Dhlakama in May 2018, but the mandate of the party’s bodies expired on January 17. Even so, at the time, the party’s spokesperson, José Manteigas, named Ossufo Momade as a candidate, in the October general elections, for the position of President of the Republic.
Even without an elective congress or meeting of the national commission called, three activists have already announced that they intend to run for the leadership of Renamo, in a year in which Mozambique holds general elections, including presidential ones: the deputy and former candidate for the Maputo municipality, Venâncio Mondlane, the son of the party’s historic leader, Elias Dhlakama, and former deputy Juliano Picardo.
The mayor of Quelimane, Manuel de Araújo, said he was studying the possibility of entering the race.
Source: Lusa
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